The Dojo still breathed the echo of what had been revealed. It was not active energy, but the spiritual residue of an extinguished current, floating among the beams like smoke that no longer knew to whom it belonged. The moon, leaning over the roof, filtered its light through the paper panels, projecting white lines over the stone. Everything seemed suspended in a calm that was not rest, but prelude. Sebastián remained silent, motionless, his face inclined toward the floor that had borne the weight of his soul. Narka, at his side, kept the stillness of a mountain that listens. Only his golden eyes moved with mineral slowness, as if the last vibration of the newly closed bond were reflected within them.

Selena stood before them. The line of light that touched her from the ceiling divided her figure in two: one half in shadow, the other bathed in a white that barely managed to be purity. Her voice broke the air with a precision that asked for no permission.

—Now it's my turn to speak.

The words were not a challenge, but a methodical declaration. The silence withdrew, obedient. Her tone was serene, exact, like that of someone announcing the beginning of an experiment. She looked at both of them and added:

—I'll do it my way. My story cannot be shown with spiritual energy or visions. It is stored, recorded in my own systems. For that, I must go to the operations vehicle. That's where my vital data are.

Sebastián slowly lifted his gaze. His red eyes, motionless, reflected the moonlight with a brightness that did not belong to emotion, but to recognition. He nodded without speaking. Then he turned his face toward Narka. The question was in the gesture, not in the voice.

The guardian barely moved his head. The sound that emerged from within him was neither a roar nor a breath: it was an ancient echo, the creaking of the world when it decides to rest.

—It is not my moment —he said, in a tone that pierced the stone—. What comes next belongs to you.

The statement left no margin. It was renunciation and promise at the same time. He did not abandon them; he simply traced the boundary where his role must remain. The light of his shell went out completely, leaving only a latent glow that imitated the pulse of the world. His presence was still there, but like a mountain that chooses not to move until the wind needs it again.

Sebastián bowed his head in respect. Selena did not respond with words; a single look was enough to accept the decision. The air between them grew lighter, though the invisible remained heavy.

They crossed the wooden doors. The sound of the frame opening was so soft that the wind confused itself with it. Outside, the night was vast and damp. The forest stretched out covered by a low mist, with black leaves that reflected the moon like fractured mirrors. The contrast with the spiritual warmth of the Dojo was immediate: the cold air clung to the skin as a reminder that the sacred was left behind.

They walked without speaking. The lanterns in the corridors had gone out behind them, one by one, as if the Dojo itself wished to close its eyes. The border between what had been lived and what was yet to be told was marked with every step. The insects sang among the trunks, and the sound was irregular, almost metallic. The wind moved the wet grass with a rustle that resembled the sigh of a machine.

Sebastián took a deep breath. He felt the change, the substitution of Qi for a different vibration: it was not spiritual, but electromagnetic, a low murmur that rose from the ground with every meter.

—The forest is the same —he thought—, but its shadow has changed. It no longer smells of meditation. It smells of metal.

The hum of the air intensified when he spoke, barely a thread of voice.

—Does that also form part of you?

Selena did not turn her head. She walked with precise steps, measuring every stone as if the ground obeyed her will.

—No —she replied—. But without it, I would not exist.

The phrase was not philosophical, but technical. The humanism of her answer was pure calculation: the acknowledgment that her essence depended on a system, not an emotion. Sebastián did not reply. He understood that for her, to exist was to keep the equation functioning.

The path descended. Among the trees, a different light began to filter through—colder, bluish, as if the air anticipated the gleam of steel. The mist grew dense, clinging to the ground. Suddenly, among the trunks, the silhouette of the vehicle emerged.

It was a metallic structure embedded among roots, covered with dust and vegetation. Its shape was elongated, almost organic; the metal seemed to have learned the texture of bark. Across its surface, lines of blue light turned on one after another, in sequence, marking a pulse that resembled the heartbeat of a machine. The side panels bore faded emblems. Cables and filaments tangled with the roots as if technology had decided to merge with the earth.

Sebastián stopped before it. In his gaze there was a silent doubt: that artifact did not belong to the same world as his body or his Qi. The machine seemed to reject the air, as if it breathed a different atmosphere. Selena approached the side of the vehicle and placed her palm on a smooth section. The metal responded with a deep hum.

—Vital recognition completed —whispered the system in a neutral voice.

The hatch opened vertically, releasing a stream of cold, clean air, scented with ozone and something else: precision.

The interior was an extension of her. Polished metallic walls reflected the white light that ran in parallel lines like exposed nerves. Suspended screens floated above circular consoles; holograms projected geometric shapes that adjusted to the pulse of whoever looked at them. In the center, an energy core throbbed with an intermittent white glow. It was neither warm nor hostile, only exact. Sebastián understood that he was stepping into the materialized thought of Selena.

"It was like walking inside a mind that never needed dreams."

She moved toward a curved chair before the main console. She sat down with surgical precision and slid her fingers across the surface. The lights changed color, from blue to pure white.

—All my history is here —she said—. Not in memories, but in files. Not in emotions, but in processes.

Sebastián watched her from the entrance. He did not speak. He knew the phrase meant more than it said. For her, to remember was not to relive—it was to execute a sequence.

The lights dimmed. The air began to vibrate with a low, constant tone. A projection beam rose from the core and remained suspended, waiting for her command. Selena closed her eyes. Her pulses stabilized. She was not meditating. She was calibrating.

"She did not seek to connect with her soul, but with her files."

The vehicle seemed to tilt inward upon itself. In the air, lines of light began to form—digital structures spinning like constellations made of data. The symbols had no language, but their order conveyed precision. It was the prelude to a revelation.

Sebastián took a step toward her. The beam's light cut his face in two halves: one living, one metallic. His voice came out low, closer to thought than to sound.

—Then show me who you were.

Selena did not look at him. Her eyelids remained closed, her breathing perfectly controlled.

—You will see who I still am —she replied.

The central core emitted a deep pulse. The hum filled the forest beyond the walls, resonating among the trees. The outer mist quivered, and the insects fell silent. Inside the vehicle, the lights revolved until they formed a circle around them. The tension became tangible—an expectation suspended in the metallic air.

The projection had not yet begun, but time had already changed shape. The human and the mechanical were breathing at the same rhythm.

Outside, the moon reflected on the steel like an eyelidless eye.

And in the silence before memory, the world seemed to lean toward them, waiting for the first image.

The air inside the vehicle vibrated with a uniform pulse, like a heart that needed no flesh. The white light that had once bathed the walls had descended to a silvery tone, almost liquid. Sebastián stood still, hands relaxed at his sides, watching the circle of energy beating at the center. It was not spiritual energy; it had the texture of metal, the density of a contained current. Selena, before the console, did not avert her gaze from the panel.

—It won't be like what you've seen —she said, without preamble—. There is no soul in my method. Only memory.

The sound of her voice was clean, measured, without emotion or harshness.

—What you will see is neither feeling nor recollection. They are recorded processes, fragments of data turned into images. The core will read my vital files and translate them into visible form. They will be born as code, then transform. There are no lies in this—but neither are there emotions. What you will see… is structure.

Sebastián nodded. In his gaze there was neither expectation nor judgment. There was respect. He knew that for her, to show was equivalent to undressing—not before eyes, but before the method.

Selena placed both hands on the panel. The core emitted a low hum that seemed to vibrate within the bones of the vehicle. The beams of light rose slowly, swirling around the center like contained spirals. Green lines crossed the air; numbers floated for an instant and fragmented into a rain of symbols. The temperature dropped. The sound sharpened until it became almost music.

—Initiating vital projection —whispered the system in a neutral, genderless voice.

The air thickened. Sebastián felt the space itself change in density, as if every molecule around them were reorganizing to serve as the framework for what was about to be born. First came the code: torrents of lines rising and falling like binary breaths. Then, the code became form.

The light folded upon itself, and from the center of the circle a room began to emerge.

The first image possessed the surgical order of a laboratory. Gray walls, metal and glass furniture, objects aligned with a precision that annulled life. A girl sat before a desk: hair tied back, posture straight, hands resting on a notebook where the lines seemed more like rules than writing. Her face—a miniature version of Selena's—held that calm that does not belong to childhood.

The figures of her parents were sharp shadows, without defined faces. Their voices were the only things that occupied the air:

—Check it again.

—Your argument has a logical flaw.

—It's not enough to understand; you must anticipate.

Each phrase was a soft blow, constant, impossible to evade. The girl did not cry. She only nodded, corrected, obeyed.

The sound of typing blended with the murmur of breathing, and the image quivered before dissolving back into code.

The second frame emerged like a blue current. The room was now empty, except for an open suitcase and a folded letter on the table. The adolescent Selena stood, watching the door. The voice of the narration—her adult voice—was heard for the first time:

—I don't remember feeling fear. Only calculation.

Her fingers touched the letter. The visible text was clear: "Thank you for teaching me how logic works. Now I'll learn by myself what it's for."

The figure crossed the threshold and disintegrated into particles.

The air shifted in temperature. The code warped, then reassembled. Now the scene was a small apartment with dim lights, old cables, and dead screens. An older woman, weary-faced—her aunt—moved in the background without interfering. Teenage Selena sat in a corner, studying before a terminal that projected incomplete data. Her illuminated silhouette was little more than a shape among shadows.

The adult voice returned:

—There I learned that I could use what they had imposed on me. That the method could also be a weapon.

The projection turned upon itself, expanding.

Gray shifted into metallic blue, and the apartment became a corporate control room. Selena was eighteen. Her hair tied back, her uniform immaculate, her gaze fixed on a series of suspended screens. The terminal lights reflected in her eyes, doubling the brightness of her attention.

Around her, other employees talked, laughed, made mistakes. She did not.

The holograms displayed quick scenes:

— An error corrected before the superior noticed.

— A report secretly rewritten to protect others' reputations.

— A promotion granted to someone who used her work.

In all of them, she remained silent. The system recorded progress, not resentment.

Amid the images, a figure appeared in the shadows: Helena Caelis.

She was not near, but her gaze—projected with a different sharpness—seemed to pierce the distance. She watched, evaluated. Selena, unaware, continued working. The hologram slowed: the young woman, leaning over the panel, eyes motionless, breathing exact.

The adult voice resonated:

—She watched me and understood. Not because I asked her to. Because efficiency cannot be hidden.

The environment expanded again.

The room dissolved into lines of light and became a vast window, with the city spread below. Steel towers, aerial routes, white lights moving like artificial blood. Before the glass, the twenty-five-year-old Selena stared at her own reflection. Her face was that of a mind at rest, not a body at ease.

Her voice filled the vehicle, now as if she were speaking directly to Sebastián:

—I did not inherit power. I built it.

—I was saved by no one. I was not trained to endure. I manufactured myself.

The images around her showed fragments: digital signatures, meetings, simulations, industrial plants, data networks connecting like veins.

—My story has no miracles. Only exact decisions.

The glow of the hologram reached its peak. Sebastián could feel the vibration of the core merging with his own pulse. It was not spiritual energy, yet it carried an equivalent weight.

The image remained suspended for a few seconds, then began to break apart. The vehicle's panels gradually darkened; the lines of light folded back toward the center. The last flash showed Selena's reflection in the glass, watching herself, before everything went dark.

Silence.

The vehicle breathed one last time, releasing a low sound, like a metallic sigh.

Selena lowered her hands from the panel.

—That is what I am —she said without turning—. Not what I feel.

Her voice carried neither pride nor apology. It was a closed report.

Sebastián watched her from the half-light. His face was half-covered by the dying glow of the core. He spoke in a tone that seemed to float between admiration and exhaustion.

—Now I understand… that even precision can hurt.

She did not answer. She only inclined her head by a single degree—a gesture so exact it seemed to be calculation and acceptance at once.

The interior of the vehicle returned to its natural darkness. Outside, the forest kept breathing; the leaves swayed with a faint murmur, as if imitating the electric pulse that had just faded. The boundary between nature and machine blurred for a few seconds, and within that threshold they remained still, understanding without words that what they had just witnessed was not a memory, but a demonstration of existence.

At the center of the vehicle, the extinguished core retained a pale reflection—a thin white line that barely trembled. It seemed like a breath trapped between cycles.

No one spoke.

The projection had ended, but the echo of its truth kept pulsing in the air.

Outside, the moon remained suspended, metallic, witness to the exact point where soul and method, for the first time, had recognized each other without denial.

The air inside the vehicle still carried a vibration that refused to die. The darkened core seemed to preserve an invisible pulse, a residue that would not vanish. No one spoke. Only the faint crack of metal expanding broke the silence.

Sebastián watched the surface of the panel, where a faint line of light still reflected. Nothing moved, yet the space held the sensation that something was still breathing.

Selena remained motionless, hands resting on her knees, back straight. The moonlight seeping through the narrow slit illuminated her profile just enough—half human, half statue. She was the same woman he had seen in the projection, except now the cold of steel was not digital, but real.

Sebastián spoke at last. His voice had neither edge nor weight, only the clarity of a question that had waited too long to be born.

—You said that is what you are. But… what did you feel while becoming that?

The phrase hung in the air, as if it had touched a point where sound should not exist.

Selena did not answer immediately. She lowered her head slightly, eyelids barely closed. The silence stretched—not from doubt, but from calibration.

When she spoke, her tone was so precise it seemed measured by breaths.

—I don't know —she said—. Or at least, not as you would understand it.

Sebastián did not move. He waited.

She continued:

—I don't think I ever felt what others call joy or sorrow. Not because I refused to, but because I learned to translate it. Where others feel impulse, I traced function. When something hurt, I analyzed it. When something was lost, I archived it. It wasn't emptiness… it was calculation.

Her voice did not tremble, but within its precision there was a fracture.

—I couldn't afford to feel any other way. If I did, the entire method would collapse. So I turned emotion into structure. If I was hurt, I classified the wound. If something moved me, I converted it into an algorithm. I stayed whole because I chose to be function before chaos.

Sebastián listened intently. His gaze was neither compassionate nor severe, only steady—like someone trying to decipher an equation written in blood.

—Then you never stopped feeling —he replied softly—. You just changed the language.

The phrase fell between them with a strange weight. Selena lifted her gaze. She didn't analyze his words, didn't try to correct them. She simply looked at him. For a second, something imperceptible in her expression softened, but it was so subtle it might have been only a shadow.

—Perhaps —she said—. But when you translate something too many times, you end up forgetting the original language.

The answer lingered, mingling with the distant hum of the forest.

Sebastián leaned slightly against the wall of the vehicle.

—I forgot too —he murmured—. Not how to feel… but how to stop feeling.

That confession was not sentimental, but as dry as a scar.

Selena turned her eyes away, gazing at the dormant console.

—We're opposites —she said—. You learned to endure pain. I learned not to need to endure it.

—And yet —he replied—, here we are. We both feel it the same, only in different ways.

Silence returned, but it was a different kind of silence—not a pause, but a synchrony.

Each one's breathing seemed to match the other's, as if the difference between flesh and method had narrowed until it blurred.

The air was like a point of balance: no longer metallic nor spiritual, but neutral—a new space that existed only because both shared it.

Sebastián looked at her without curiosity, without intent.

For the first time, he wasn't trying to understand her—he accepted her.

And Selena, without the need for calculation, understood him.

Selena broke the silence. Her voice was lower than before, almost a thought spoken aloud.

—Perhaps I never knew how to feel… but I learned not to destroy what I feel when it happens.

Sebastián raised his gaze.

—That's enough.

It was not comfort—it was verdict.

And in that exchange, something invisible rearranged itself between them: not tenderness, not affection, but understanding.

An unspoken pact, between two natures that had at last recognized their symmetry.

in the air that surrounds them it stops: the vehicle's systems emit one last pulse, as if the metal were responding to the balance found.

Outside, the mist of the forest moves slowly, reflecting the moonlight on the wet leaves.

From the inside, it seems like a halted ocean.

Sebastián closes his eyes for an instant.

Selena watches him and does not analyze the gesture.

For the first time, neither tries to decipher the other.

The vehicle's core lights up again faintly, a white line trembling between their breaths.

It was not a system reboot, but something more subtle: the record of a new kind of silence, a place where reason and flesh had stopped being opposites.

The scene ends in that instant of suspension.

There are no final words, only the certainty that, for the first time since they met, there was no distance.

Outside, the forest continued existing.

Inside, two consciousnesses learned to coexist without the need for understanding.

And between both, the air —neither metallic nor spiritual— breathed with them.

The interior of the vehicle had become a metallic sanctuary. The air still held the tremor of the system, as if the machines were breathing a residue of life. The dimness was dense, but the core, in the center, blinked at irregular intervals: a white line that turned on and off with the patience of a wound.

Sebastián remained standing, his back brushing the side wall, while his eyes followed the luminous sequence. The silence did not weigh, did not cut; it floated, contained, as if the previous conversation had left suspended the exact vibration between two natures that had learned to recognize each other. In front of him, Selena remained seated, elbows resting on her knees, hands interlaced, her head slightly inclined toward the light of the core. Her breathing was imperceptible. She seemed to listen to something beyond the air, as if the echo of her own projection still pulsed in the metal.

Sebastián spoke without taking his gaze from the center of the vehicle.

—I already saw what you were —he said in a low, rough, bluntless voice—. But I don't know what you seek now. Why do you keep perfecting something that is already complete?

The words were not a judgment. They were a question thrown toward a space that still did not know its answer. The white light turned on once more, touching Selena's profile. She did not raise her gaze immediately. She moved her fingers, a minimal contraction, as if the question had touched an inner fiber that still had no name.

—I don't know if I am complete —she answered—. I was molded to achieve precision. But precision has no goal. It only keeps error at bay.

The tone held neither sorrow nor pride; only a clarity that hurt because of its exactness.

—My life was a system of continuous correction —she added—. Every decision, a way to avoid failures. Every achievement, an attempt to eliminate noise. But one cannot live inside an algorithm. And yet, that is what I am.

The silence between each phrase was an invisible scalpel. Sebastián watched her calmly, understanding that what she spoke was not a complaint, but a structural revelation.

—Then the project continues —he said—, even if it no longer has a creator.

Selena barely nodded.

—The project doesn't need an owner. It is its own inertia. If I stop correcting myself, I cease to exist. If I keep doing it, I never finish.

Her voice dropped one more tone, and the white light reflected in her eyes, turning them into empty mirrors.

—I don't know which of the two ways is more similar to dying.

Sebastián took a step closer. His shadow was projected onto the metallic surface, distorted by the curvature of the vehicle.

—Then that is what separates us —he said calmly—. I no longer seek to correct myself. I only exist because I cannot do anything else. And in that I found peace.

Selena looked at him. There was an instant in which the word "peace" seemed foreign, an entity that did not belong to her vocabulary.

—Peace… or resignation? —she asked.

He smiled slightly, but not as mockery, rather as recognition.

—To resign oneself is to accept a limit. I have no limits. Only movement.

The phrase resonated inside the vehicle, reverberating with the core's pulse. For a moment, both heard the steady rhythm of that intermittent light, and it was as if the machine were measuring the distance between their thoughts.

Selena lowered her gaze to the floor.

—I was designed to stop error —she said—. Not to understand what happens when error becomes life.

The core glowed again. The vibration spread through the floor, making the energy lines that ran through the metal tremble. Sebastián watched the phenomenon closely.

—The system should be inactive —she murmured.

—Perhaps it's responding to you —he answered.

Selena remained silent. The white light of the core pulsed three times, and its rhythm aligned, almost imperceptibly, with her breathing. It was not coincidence. It was synchronicity. The machine was copying her vital frequency.

It was the first time something outside her control responded to her rhythm. And it did not threaten her.

Selena slowly stretched her hand toward the core, but stopped halfway.

—It shouldn't happen —she said—. Everything here obeys defined parameters.

—Maybe that's why —Sebastián replied—. Because you were, too. And you aren't anymore.

She looked at him, without visible emotion, but the blinking of the light revealed something new on her face: a slight softness, a weariness that wasn't physical.

—Maybe that's my next error —she murmured—. Not knowing what to do when the method ends.

Sebastián approached until he was beside her. He didn't touch her. He only spoke in a tone that didn't need to impose itself.

—Then let it end.

The echo of those words traveled through the vehicle like a dull pulse. It wasn't an order nor advice. It was a truth that the air had to carry until she decided to understand it.

Selena looked at the core again. The light kept pulsing, but slower, as if the system were adapting to the new balance between them. Outside, the forest moved. The moon, still pale, passed through the slits of the armor and let a strip of clarity fall over them.

For a moment, nothing existed beyond the sound of the air and the blinking of the metal. Sebastián leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the luminous line. Selena remained seated, fingers relaxed over her knees.

Neither spoke. It wasn't necessary.

The silence between them was not the same as at the beginning. It was a new silence, without tension, without calculation. It didn't promise union, but neither distance. It was the exact point where two opposite natures stopped trying to explain themselves.

Outside, the night breathed like an immense organism. Inside the vehicle, a machine was learning to imitate the pulse of a human being. And between both, two consciousnesses were beginning to share the same stillness.

There was no closure. There was no conclusion.

Only the murmur of the metal, the white pulse of the core, and the mute certainty that something, inside Selena's method, had begun to break softly.

And that fracture, for the first time, did not hurt.

________________________________________________

END OF CHAPTER 50

The path continues…

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